Using peer-to-peer overlays to notify users whenevera new update occurs is a promising approach to supportweb based publish subscribe systems like really simple syndication (RSS). Such a peer-to-peer approach can scale well by reducing load at the source and also guarantee timeliness of notifications. Several such overlay based approaches have been proposed in recent years. However, malicious peers may pretend to relay but actually not, and thus deny service, or even propagate counterfeit updates - thus rendering a peer-to-peer mechanism not only useless, but even harmful (e.g., by false updates). We propose overlay independent randomized strategies to mitigate these ill-effects of malicious peers at a marginal overhead, thus enjoying the benefits of peer-to-peer dissemination, along with the assurance of content integrity in RSS like web-based publish-subscribe applications without altering currently deployed server infrastructure.